Posted on 04/21/2008 7:23:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
In Ben Stein's new film "Expelled," there is a great scene where Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.
So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, "How did life begin?" One would think that this is a question that could be easily answered. Dawkins, however, frankly admits that he has no idea. One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.
In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in The Way of the Cell that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. Moreover, Harold writes that the various components of the cell do not function like random widgets; rather, they work purposefully together, as if cooperating in a planned organized venture. Dawkins himself has described the cell as the kind of supercomputer, noting that it functions through an information system that resembles the software code.
Is it possible that living cells somehow assembled themselves from nonliving things by chance? The probabilities here are so infinitesimal that they approach zero. Moreover, the earth has been around for some 4.5 billion years and the first traces of life have already been found at some 3.5 billion years ago. This is just what we have discovered: it's quite possible that life existed on earth even earlier. What this means is that, within the scope of evolutionary time, life appeared on earth very quickly after the earth itself was formed. Is it reasonable to posit that a chance combination of atoms and molecules, under those conditions, somehow generated a living thing? Could the random collision of molecules somehow produce a computer?
It is ridiculously implausible to think so. And the absurdity was recognized more than a decade ago by Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix. Yet Crick is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens. Let's call this the "ET" explanation.
Stein brilliantly responds that he had no idea Richard Dawkins believes in intelligent design! And indeed Dawkins does seem to be saying that alien intelligence is responsible for life arriving on earth. What are we to make of this? Basically Dawkins is surrendering on the claim that evolution can account for the origins of life. It can't. The issue now is simply whether a natural intelligence (ET) or a supernatural intelligence (God) created life. Dawkins can't bear the supernatural explanation and so he opts for ET. But doesn't it take as much, or more, faith to believe in extraterrestrial biology majors depositing life on earth than it does to believe in a transcendent creator?
I will not ask how it has been determined to be an arrowhead, but I will accept your request. Now you have a known arrowhead. What test(s) and how will you perform it(them) to determine if my hypothesis is correct.
The Wedge Document. It states all the way through a clear religious purpose.
Your third step equates ID with Christians by implication yet the record clearly shows that Muslims believe in ID
Muslims aren't trying to get ID in schools as science.
t is often pointed out by Darwinists that Christians believe in Darwinism.
Most Christians are able to separate their personal religious belief from science. Others apparently think their belief should take the place of science.
Therefore it is erroneous to exclusively equate ID and Christians.
It has been clearly equated by the founders and leaders of the ID movement in this country. The Wedge Document even specifically talks about preaching to the choir (Christians) as an easy way to gain momentum for ID.
I'm sure they hoped for one. Universities usually don't like being publicly connected to pseudoscience (Baylor and Marks in the movie, but he still has his job), and the professors will usually try to stop it. It doesn't look good to be a serious scientists and go to conventions where the others laugh "So you're from that Intelligent Design university."
And yet they use Jackie the Jokemans text in their classes.
Go figure.
Most people have a good idea whether they'll get tenure, and few apply if they're not pretty sure they'll get it. It's better to just look for other employment and not have tenure denial on your record. As I said before, imagine what standardized test scores would look like if only our 4.0 students took them.
You're just handwaving. But I'm willing to be convinced with some numbers.
Absolutely agree. It should be protected in the classroom too. Of course the relevant place for it would be in a "religious origins" class, not a science class.
The emails sent by some of Gonzalez' colleagues make it clear that they denied him tenure because of beliefs he held, but never brought to the classroom.
They wanted him denied, but we don't know that. We do know his record shows he didn't deserve tenure even if there was no ID issue. Gonzalez is free to ask the university to release his records to prove that he was denied tenure over ID. I wonder why he hasn't done that.
The site linked by the movie's site claimed 91% across the school, and I'm willing to believe that. I was talking about it being low relative to the school's overall rate.
See earlier post. He apparently was a rising star in astronomy before he got involved in ID and let his scientific endeavors suffer. Unfortunately for him, schools don't care much about what you did before you got there when deciding tenure. They care about what you've done while at the school, and in his case it wasn't much, especially compared to his previous work.
That makes a very good case against tenure. The school sees a scientists sliding down in his work, the clear reasoning being that he is likely to continue sliding, and you don't want someone like that to have tenure.
I already laid all this out. Stein presses Dawkins, asking him if ID could be considered at all, so Dawkins then comes up with the alien thing, which he presents as a hypothetical possibility.
Dawkins actually talks about this in his book, The Ancestor's Tale, ( I just read this part last night,) so I assume Stein knew about it and was fishing for it.
In the book, Dawkins attributes the idea to Francis Crick, calling it "Crick's fantasy" and states, "Crick himself - whether with regret or relief it is hard to say - finds little good evidence to support his own theory of Directed Panspermia." ( Crick died in 2004, just as the book was coming out. )
In the movie, I am certain that Dawkins never gives any indication that he "believes in it." All his statements about how such a thing "must have occurred" are in the hypothetical, that is they are conditions or stipulations on the hypothesis, not expressions of belief in the hypothesis.
But there could be good reason not to give him tenure. However the emails remove the benefit of the doubt that should normally be given to the University.
This had nothing to do with GG's competence, publishing or grants. It was all about evil ID.
Be honest and acknowledge that. The written record is abundantly clear.
Many hospitals have a clear religious purpose, yet that does not make them or the medicine in them religion.
Muslims aren't trying to get ID in schools as science.
Oh?
Most Christians are able to separate their personal religious belief from science. Others apparently think their belief should take the place of science.
Which makes Christians distinct from ID'ers by your definitions(Since not all ID'ers are Christians and not all Christians are ID'ers). Therefore your step 3 does not apply to ID'ers.
It has been clearly equated by the founders and leaders of the ID movement in this country.
The Muslim I quoted above doesn't think so.
One of your problems is that you are equating the Discovery Institute with ID. They are not. No more than NCSE is Darwinism.
Well, Baylor did have The Michael Polanyi Center for a while, at the instigation of Baylor's president. This was separated from the "scientific" portions of the university but that was not far enough away from some. So a fight ensued. We know the result. Of course, that was not based upon any tenure decision. And I am not changing the subject. You mentioned Baylor.
tpanther said:
When I was 4 years old I nearly hung myself to death, playing on “monkey bars”, jumped and clothing got hung up around my neck and caught on a screw and I couldn’t reach.
I experienced quite vivid and supenatural out of body experiences, able to see myself from some, what looked to be 40-60 feet above, and even the people around me...there was a little girl in shock playing in a sandbox below, and her mohter INSIDE their house, who eventually came and rescued me before I was permanently gone.
I was only 4 but it’s just as real and fresh today some 43 years later, and convinced me irrevocably there’s an after life or at the very least life outside of our current confinement.
Thank you so much for your NDE testimony tpanther.
I’ve been trying to get the stubborn folks to “wake up & realize that THIS life isn’t it”.
I certainly don’t want anyone spending their eternity in Hell...but sadly some just don’t want to listen.
It baffles me that they can believe that they came from goo and over millions & billions of years and got to how they are today.
Yet we have thousands and thousands of folks willing to speak out and tell them about their NDE’s either in Heaven or Hell....and they can’t believe that.
It’s so sad.
Does it match, functionally and forensically? Is it the proper shape and size, and does it exhibit the same kind of tool marks and patterns that the known arrowhead does?
What I got from that was "Dembski does not play well with others."
Arrowheads are a great analogy for the problems of ID. The distinguishing thing about human artifacts is that we have humans to observe and can observe the making of objects similar to artifacts.
From this we can derive information about the methods employed, the motives, the capabilities and limitations of the makers.
My favorite Dembski citation is this:
“... At the same time that research in the Bible Code has taken off, research in a seemingly unrelated field has taken off as well, namely, biological design. These two fields are in fact closely related. Indeed, the same highly improbable, independently given patterns that appear as the equidistant letter sequences in the Bible Code appear in biology as functionally integrated (”irreducibly complex”) biological systems, of the sort Michael Behe discussed in Darwin’s Black Box.
The relevant statistical methodology is identical for both fields. As a result, the two fields stand to profit from each other. ...”
You go, Bill.
Hospitals have helping people as their mission. ID has spreading Christianity and changing culture as its mission.
And it looks like Muslims are riding on the coattails of the Christian ID work.
Which makes Christians distinct from ID'ers by your definitions(Since not all ID'ers are Christians and not all Christians are ID'ers).
The ID movement in this country was started by Christians for Christian purposes. That all Christians aren't in it, or that others believe too is absolutely irrelevant.
You can argue opinion over this, but the fact remains that the logic was solid, it was not a fallacy.
One of your problems is that you are equating the Discovery Institute with ID.
The Discovery Institute founded the ID movement in this country, set its strategies and provides funding. "Teach the Controversy" and the idea of evolution as a theory in crisis and dissent is their invention. I haven't found one of the top-rung ID proponents who doesn't have some connection to the Discovery Institute (Behe, Dembski, Berlinski and Gonzalez from the movie are actually fellows).
Nice words, but it is a rock. Functionality is not a valid test. Forensically? IOW your first sentence is "worthless"(don't take it personally, this is a discussion of hypothesis testing).
Your next statement does have the "look and feel" of a test. But what is the proper shape and size? I contend that what you mean is "Does it look like an arrowhead?" Okay, it does. So the next part of your test asks "does it exhibit the same kind of tool marks and patterns that the known arrowhead does?" Tool marks? It is a rock. Evidently the rock has chips removed by other rocks(or something else hard), since neither arrowhead, the hypothesized arrowhead nor the example arrowhead, display any toolmarks. Patterns, well yeah, they look alike, not exactly but alike. They each have a point. So I guess my hypothesis has passed the test. Has it?
That is quite a leap since I did not mention Dembski. I guess you blame the little kid the bullies pester for the fight that ensues.
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